Miranda

Tuesday

Apr 30, 2013 at 12:01 AMApr 30, 2013 at 1:00 PM

Henry J. Waters III

By now we know the younger Tsarnaev brother was interrogated for 16 hours before law officers finally read his Miranda rights, after which the suspect spoke no more. Investigators had gotten valuable information from the wounded perpetrator before Miranda, but the font was immediately shut off after he learned he could remain mum.

The U.S. Constitution as interpreted by the U.S. Supreme Court says a suspect must not be pressured into incriminating himself and law officers have a legal obligation to explain this protection before pressing for information.

Even after Miranda, a person in custody still might tell all, but often the guilty use this constitutional protection to say nothing until their lawyer arrives and advises further silence.

When deemed necessary to avoid imminent mayhem, law officers may dispense with Miranda but, with my limited legal expertise, I reckon information must be read as soon as immediate danger is past. So at what moment was information from Dzhokhar Tsarnaev no longer deemed vital and therefore his further interrogation exempt from Miranda? In this case, after 16 hours.

The Boston bombing was a terrorist event of enough import to warrant cutting corners. Nobody would question trying hard to get information from the younger brother in case one might learn of imminent additional terror, but at some point, sooner rather than later, we must revert to constitutional rules.

This means Tsarnaev should be tried in civilian courts rather than a military tribunal reserved for "enemy combatants," the denomination assigned to the hundreds of prisoners at Guantanamo Cuba who remain in custody without having been charged with any crime.

Tsarnaev, a U.S. citizen, deserves his day in court, where plenty of evidence seems at hand to convict him of mortal crimes. Along the way he deserves the same due process protections any of us would enjoy.